Archive for the ‘Anne Frank’ Category

President Donald Trump continues to face outrage over his response to last weekend’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where racism and anti-Semitism were on clear display. We speak with Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, which is calling on Twitter to suspend Trump’s personal account, after branding him an accomplice to domestic terrorism.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump continues to face outrage over his response to last weekend’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where racism and anti-Semitism were on clear display in scenes like this one, when torch-bearing protesters marched on the University of Virginia campus Friday night chanting “Blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology.

AMY GOODMAN: At Saturday’s Unite the Right rally, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members also displayed swastikas on flags and banners as they protested the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Members of the local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, said that ahead of the protest, while they were praying, men dressed in fatigues and carrying semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the synagogue, prompting people to leave the service from the back of the building in groups as a safety precaution. Later in the afternoon, Heather Heyer was killed, on Saturday, when a 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer named James Alex Fields plowed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators. In another incident, white supremacists beat 20-year-old African-American protester De’Andre Harris.

Following the protests, Monday, the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in Boston, Massachusetts, by a teenager who threw a rock through a glass panel etched with numbers symbolizing the numbers tattooed on the arms of Jews and others imprisoned in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. The attack marked the second time this summer that Boston’s Holocaust Memorial has been vandalized.

It took until Tuesday for President Trump to place blame on white supremacists for the deadly violence in Charlottesville. During a news conference at Trump Tower, he attacked the counterprotesters, repeating his earlier claim that both sides were to blame for the violence. He also seemed to ridicule the national movement to remove Confederate monuments, saying the protesters would next want to tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Trump also defended some of the white nationalist protesters who descended on Charlottesville.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, President Trump took to Twitter to further complain that it’s, quote, “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. … [T]he beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” he tweeted.

Leaders of four congressional caucuses are now demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, quote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on US policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.”

Now the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is calling on Twitter to suspend President Trump’s personal account, after branding him an “accomplice to domestic terrorism.”

For more, we’re joined by the group’s executive director, Steve Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what you’re calling for.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Amy, Twitter has a choice here: It can stand with the love that Heather Heyer’s life stood for, or it can stand for the hatred that Donald Trump stands for. There are no two sides. Where is Twitter going to stand? Twitter is under no obligation, as a private company, to carry Donald Trump’s hatred. So, President Trump has two accounts. He has his POTUS account, and for the sake of free speech and getting his hate on record for future generations to look at it and to say “Never again,” listen, for those reasons, keep his presidential account. But he has a personal account, @realDonaldTrump, that amplifies his hate. Twitter doesn’t have to double down on hate. Twitter has a choice. Get rid of the @realDonaldTrump hatred account, not but better than the POTUS account. At least get rid of one.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about issues of free speech here?

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, again, he has his POTUS account. Free speech doesn’t mean that you have to give hate twice the megaphone, when he already has one megaphone. That seems, to us, a Solomonic solution.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about his response. On Monday, a teleprompter news — he makes a teleprompter statement — some called it a hostage video — where he condemned and named the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis, this directly contradicting what he had said two days before, when he said that all sides were responsible for the violence, and then, the next day, on Tuesday, reverting back to what he said on Saturday and particularly focusing on the fact that the white supremacists were — had a permit for their protest, unlike the counterprotesters.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Amy, I was horrified on Monday by the coverage of the mainstream media that applauded the president for his hostage news conference in which he read a teleprompter with all the energy of a power outage in New York City. He didn’t look like he meant every word — any word. He looked like there was a figurative gun to his head. He didn’t want to be there. And when I read the media reports, they said, “Aha, the president finally came out!” You’ve got to be kidding. The president said nothing after Charlottesville. Finally, he was forced to. Have we so normalized hate that that Monday press conference, that was scripted, should get applause?

AMY GOODMAN: Not even a press conference, a statement.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And not even a press conference. But what kind of world has America landed in? Where is our morality, that we are settling for the crumbs of a fake condemnation? Now, we —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we learned it was fake on Tuesday.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And we learned it was fake on Tuesday. Here’s the thing. It’s time not to limit ourselves to saying that President Trump commits acts of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBT. The president is racist, the president is Islamophobic, and the president is anti-Semitic. Call it out for what it is, because if you don’t, you’re normalizing the underlying conditions. Now, why would I say that? We’ve seen again and again a pattern. How many times do we have to see that if a president quacks like a racist duck, walks like a racist dock and does everything in his power to be a racist duck, he is a racist duck?

AMY GOODMAN: What does this have to do with Anne Frank? You’re executive director of the Anne Frank Center.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: So, let me say this. There are those — not in your audience — who would say, “Uh, Steven, aren’t you coming on a little too strong for the Anne Frank Center?” No. Anne Frank did not just write her diary as her own personal experience, which she included. She also wrote it as one of social justice’s greatest exhortations. She wrote that we have to act to prevent “never again.” So, Amy, “never again” is supposed to be an early warning system. If we don’t shout this danger from the rooftops, when will we? When history has taken its worst stages of progression? That’s when we’re going to shout it from the rooftops? Please.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, leaders — let me turn to leaders of four congressional caucuses demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on US policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.” Talk about who Sebastian Gorka is today and also the calls, the expos by the Jewish Forward about his ties to far-right Nazi groups in Hungary.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Sebastian Gorka has links to a Hungarian neo-Nazi organization called the Vitzi Rend. His father was a member, so the daily Forward reported. And Sebastian Gorka actually wears his father’s neo-Nazi-sympathetic Vitzi Rend medal. Sebastian Gorka has worn it on many occasions, and there are photos. Sebastian Gorka says wearing this neo-Nazi medal is merely a tribute to his late father. I’m sorry, didn’t dad have a favorite tie? Really? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly wear my father’s neo-Nazi medals.

AMY GOODMAN: And Steve Bannon?

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: OK, Steve Bannon is beneath contempt. Here’s the politics we have in the White House. President Trump is clearly afraid to fire Steve Bannon, because President Trump probably wonders what hell Steve Bannon will cause out there. Steve Bannon is destroying the country. He’s got to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play what President Trump had to say about him, insisting that Steve Bannon is not a racist.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I like Mr. Bannon. He’s a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that. And I like him. He’s a good man. He is not a racist. I can tell you that. He’s a good person. He actually gets a very unfair press in that regard. But we’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon. But he’s a good person. And I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.

AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump, talking about Steve Bannon.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Donald Trump really is the expert on seeing whether somebody is racist? Give me a break. Come on. But, you know, I’m intrigued by that clip. We had Heather Heyer die on Saturday, and President Trump is talking about his alleged victory for president. How narcissistic can you get? What President Trump should have done in Trump Tower is be a leader, commune with our grief. And, Amy, this isn’t — this isn’t partisan, because we had — every president of the last few generations knew how to commune with grief. Not this president.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer spoke with Israeli media and compared his views to those held by Zionists. This is Spencer speaking to Channel 2 News Israel.

RICHARD SPENCER: As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identity, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites. I mean, you could — you could say that I am a white Zionist, in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland that’s for us and ourselves, just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: That is white supremacist Richard Spencer.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, I’m a proud Jew. I’m a proud supporter of Israel. I’m a proud supporter of a two-state solution for Israel living side by side with an independent Palestinian state together in love and cooperation. That is repulsive. Wherever you stand on the Middle East — I don’t care if you’re left, right or center — what we just heard is repulsive. And President Trump is bad for the Israelis. He’s bad for the Palestinians. Talk about an opportunity to unify us. That was exploitation. I want to throw up.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with David Duke speaking in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. The KKK leader said white nationalists are going to, quote, “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump’s presidency.”

DAVID DUKE: This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back. And that’s what we’ve got to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, during the presidential campaign last year, then-candidate Donald Trump came under fire for inciting his supporters to violence. Here’s one example.

DONALD TRUMP: If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.

AMY GOODMAN: So that was President Trump then. And, of course, we see what he’s saying today. Final comments, Richard [sic] Goldstein of the Anne Frank Center?

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Steven Goldstein, but I have a brother Richard.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Goldstein.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: I don’t mind. But listen, how is Melania’s cyberbullying campaign going? We see in that clip that there is almost no space — in fact, none — between Donald Trump’s rhetoric and David Duke’s rhetoric. We have a rhetorical convergence between the hate speech of the president of the United States and, as we saw in that clip, David Duke. That’s what America has become. And we can all weep.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump continues to face outrage over his response to last weekends deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where racism and anti-Semitism were on clear display in scenes like this one, when torch-bearing protesters marched on the University of Virginia campus Friday night chanting “Blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology.

AMY GOODMAN: At Saturdays Unite the Right rally, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members also displayed swastikas on flags and banners as they protested the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Members of the local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, said that ahead of the protest, while they were praying, men dressed in fatigues and carrying semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the synagogue, prompting people to leave the service from the back of the building in groups as a safety precaution. Later in the afternoon, Heather Heyer was killed, on Saturday, when a 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer named James Alex Fields plowed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators. In another incident, white supremacists beat 20-year-old African-American protester DeAndre Harris.

Following the protests, [Tuesday], the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in Boston, Massachusetts, by a teenager who threw a rock through a glass panel etched with numbers symbolizing the numbers tattooed on the arms of Jews and others imprisoned in Nazi Germanys concentration camps. The attack marked the second time this summer that Bostons Holocaust Memorial has been vandalized.

It took until Tuesday for President Trump to place blame on white supremacists for the deadly violence in Charlottesville. During a news conference at Trump Tower, he attacked the counterprotesters, repeating his earlier claim that both sides were to blame for the violence. He also seemed to ridicule the national movement to remove Confederate monuments, saying the protesters would next want to tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Trump also defended some of the white nationalist protesters who descended on Charlottesville.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Ive condemned neo-Nazis. Ive condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, President Trump took to Twitter to further complain that its, quote, “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. … [T]he beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” he tweeted.

Leaders of four congressional caucuses are now demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, quote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on U.S. policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.”

Now the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is calling on Twitter to suspend President Trumps personal account, after branding him an “accomplice to domestic terrorism.”

For more, were joined by the groups executive director, Steve Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what youre calling for.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Amy, Twitter has a choice here: It can stand with the love that Heather Heyers life stood for, or it can stand for the hatred that Donald Trump stands for. There are no two sides. Where is Twitter going to stand? Twitter is under no obligation, as a private company, to carry Donald Trumps hatred. So, President Trump has two accounts. He has his POTUS account, and for the sake of free speech and getting his hate on record for future generations to look at it and to say “Never again,” listen, for those reasons, keep his presidential account. But he has a personal account, @realDonaldTrump, that amplifies his hate. Twitter doesnt have to double down on hate. Twitter has a choice. Get rid of the @realDonaldTrump hatred account, not but better than the POTUS account. At least get rid of one.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about issues of free speech here?

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, again, he has his POTUS account. Free speech doesnt mean that you have to give hate twice the megaphone, when he already has one megaphone. That seems, to us, a Solomonic solution.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about his response. On Monday, a teleprompter newshe makes a teleprompter statementsome called it a hostage videowhere he condemned and named the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis, this directly contradicting what he had said two days before, when he said that all sides were responsible for the violence, and then, the next day, on Tuesday, reverting back to what he said on Saturday and particularly focusing on the fact that the white supremacists werehad a permit for their protest, unlike the counterprotesters.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Amy, I was horrified on Monday by the coverage of the mainstream media that applauded the president for his hostage news conference in which he read a teleprompter with all the energy of a power outage in New York City. He didnt look like he meant every wordany word. He looked like there was a figurative gun to his head. He didnt want to be there. And when I read the media reports, they said, “Aha, the president finally came out!” Youve got to be kidding. The president said nothing after Charlottesville. Finally, he was forced to. Have we so normalized hate that that Monday press conference, that was scripted, should get applause?

AMY GOODMAN: Not even a press conference, a statement.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And not even a press conference. But what kind of world has America landed in? Where is our morality, that we are settling for the crumbs of a fake condemnation? Now, we

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we learned it was fake on Tuesday.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And we learned it was fake on Tuesday. Heres the thing. Its time not to limit ourselves to saying that President Trump commits acts of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBT. The president is racist, the president is Islamophobic, and the president is anti-Semitic. Call it out for what it is, because if you dont, youre normalizing the underlying conditions. Now, why would I say that? Weve seen again and again a pattern. How many times do we have to see that if a president quacks like a racist duck, walks like a racist dock and does everything in his power to be a racist duck, he is a racist duck?

AMY GOODMAN: What does this have to do with Anne Frank? Youre executive director of the Anne Frank Center.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: So, let me say this. There are thosenot in your audiencewho would say, “Uh, Steven, arent you coming on a little too strong for the Anne Frank Center?” No. Anne Frank did not just write her diary as her own personal experience, which she included. She also wrote it as one of social justices greatest exhortations. She wrote that we have to act to prevent “never again.” So, Amy, “never again” is supposed to be an early warning system. If we dont shout this danger from the rooftops, when will we? When history has taken its worst stages of progression? Thats when were going to shout it from the rooftops? Please.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, leaderslet me turn to leaders of four congressional caucuses demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on U.S. policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.” Talk about who Sebastian Gorka is today and also the calls, the expos by the Jewish Forward about his ties to far-right Nazi groups in Hungary.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Sebastian Gorka has links to a Hungarian neo-Nazi organization called the Vitzi Rend. His father was a member, so the daily Forward reported. And Sebastian Gorka actually wears his fathers neo-Nazi-sympathetic Vitzi Rend medal. Sebastian Gorka has worn it on many occasions, and there are photos. Sebastian Gorka says wearing this neo-Nazi medal is merely a tribute to his late father. Im sorry, didnt dad have a favorite tie? Really? I mean, I dont know about you, but I dont particularly wear my fathers neo-Nazi medals.

AMY GOODMAN: And Steve Bannon?

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: OK, Steve Bannon is beneath contempt. Heres the politics we have in the White House. President Trump is clearly afraid to fire Steve Bannon, because President Trump probably wonders what hell Steve Bannon will cause out there. Steve Bannon is destroying the country. Hes got to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play what President Trump had to say about him, insisting that Steve Bannon is not a racist.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I like Mr. Bannon. Hes a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that. And I like him. Hes a good man. He is not a racist. I can tell you that. Hes a good person. He actually gets a very unfair press in that regard. But well see what happens with Mr. Bannon. But hes a good person. And I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.

AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump, talking about Steve Bannon.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Donald Trump really is the expert on seeing whether somebody is racist? Give me a break. Come on. But, you know, Im intrigued by that clip. We had Heather Heyer die on Saturday, and President Trump is talking about his alleged victory for president. How narcissistic can you get? What President Trump should have done in Trump Tower is be a leader, commune with our grief. And, Amy, this isntthis isnt partisan, because we hadevery president of the last few generations knew how to commune with grief. Not this president.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer spoke with Israeli media and compared his views to those held by Zionists. This is Spencer speaking to Channel 2 News Israel.

RICHARD SPENCER: As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identity, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites. I mean, you couldyou could say that I am a white Zionist, in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland thats for us and ourselves, just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: That is white supremacist Richard Spencer.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Im a proud Jew. Im a proud supporter of Israel. Im a proud supporter of a two-state solution for Israel living side by side with an independent Palestinian state together in love and cooperation. That is repulsive. Wherever you stand on the Middle EastI dont care if youre left, right or centerwhat we just heard is repulsive. And President Trump is bad for the Israelis. Hes bad for the Palestinians. Talk about an opportunity to unify us. That was exploitation. I want to throw up.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with David Duke speaking in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. The KKK leader said white nationalists are going to, quote, “fulfill the promises of Donald Trumps presidency.”

DAVID DUKE: This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. Were going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. Thats what we believed in. Thats why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said hes going to take our country back. And thats what weve got to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, during the presidential campaign last year, then-candidate Donald Trump came under fire for inciting his supporters to violence. Heres one example.

DONALD TRUMP: If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hellI promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.

AMY GOODMAN: So that was President Trump then. And, of course, we see what hes saying today. Final comments, Richard [sic] Goldstein of the Anne Frank Center?

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Steven Goldstein, but I have a brother Richard.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Goldstein.

STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: I dont mind. But listen, how is Melanias cyberbullying campaign going? We see in that clip that there is almost no spacein fact, nonebetween Donald Trumps rhetoric and David Dukes rhetoric. We have a rhetorical convergence between the hate speech of the president of the United States and, as we saw in that clip, David Duke. Thats what America has become. And we can all weep.

After the endless barrage of exchanges of the past weeks, some appallingly hate-filled, some grossly apologetic and some shamefully inept, let me say one last thing: The man in the Oval Office is a RACIST.

The man is also a narcissist and therefore, cannot think beyond himself or see past today but unfortunately, he along with his presidency are well on their way to becoming a disgraceful chapter in the saga of the world just as the vile words and abhorrent actions of Hitler will forever be etched in the annals of history.

So here is my modest reminder to our elected officials, particularly those who are part of Trumps world:

1. Those who preach hate against those who are different are WRONG.

2. Those who oppose those who preach hate against those who are different are RIGHT.

The only logical conclusion therefore is that TRUMP IS WRONG. It is now time to lose sight of party affiliations, set aside partisan politics, shed the need to win arguments and/or point fingers because there is one and only one morality. So put away your ego, stop this egotistical man and stamp out the Nazis he is protecting. It really isnt that hard to stand up against hate. Remember the little girl who had the gumption to denounce hatred and uphold love even when pitilessly hunted down simply because of the faith she was born into? The world was a bit late in stopping the madness then. We paid dearly by losing millions of precious lives and generating countless lifeless hearts that continue to grieve to this day.

Lets not let history repeat itself. We know better now. Upstanding citizens of the world and sentinels of this great democracy know that you have been given a second chance and endowed with the power to change the course of history which keeps writing itself unforgivingly. Do what is RIGHT for the sake of history. Stop him and stop the hate.

Never-Trumpers may have been right when they warned that he would destroy the conservative movement by becoming the face of it, says Jamie Weinstein at the Washington Examiner. Because the president is not now, nor has he ever been, a conservative. Indeed, its unlikely he has an adult understanding of what conservatism actually is. But he pretended to be one to win conservative votes. Yet after the events of the last week, too many people will now, unfortunately, begin to associate white nationalism with conservatism. And that undermines conservative arguments in legitimate debates, turning them toxic. President Trump is destroying the conservative movement and, frankly, many conservatives are complicit for giving him the opportunity to do so.

Security writer: The Gasps of Weak Fascism

Its important to understand what the terror in Charlottesville means, but also what it does not mean, contends Eli Lake at Bloomberg: It is not a return of Jim Crow. Nor is it the face of the new right, despite the bigots call for unity. It is not the dawn of American fascism, either. Rather it is the growl and gasp of a hateful and hopeless fringe. Terrorism and street fights, after all, are the recourse of the weak radical movements that cannot advance their agenda through the ballot will choose bloodshed. But American history teaches that violent radical movements have failed in this country. Indeed, the norms that Trump tried to destroy as a candidate are not as fragile as the bigots would like to think. For while the swastika-bearing marchers are indeed fascists, they are weak fascists.

Tennis fan: Let Maria Sharapova Play

Tom Perrotta at The Weekly Standard applauds the wild-card invitation thats just been extended by the US Open to Maria Sharapova for next months tournament: Its unfair when an athlete pays the full price for a mistake she made because she wasnt paying attention, rather than trying to break the rules. Sharapova has been serving a 15-month suspension involving meldonium, a cardiac supplement she had been taking for years. But the US Tennis Association banned it at the start of the 2016 season and Sharapova, somehow, missed the news. Thats inexcusable but theres no reason to look at this as a crime. Its unclear from testing how much this drug does its not a steroid or a boost of red blood cells. As a past Open champion, its perfectly reasonable for the USTA to want to include Sharapova at the expense of another long-shot. Conservative take: A Disgrace to Anne Franks Memory

Why, asks Albert Eisenberg at National Review, is the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect perverting the legacy of its namesake by becoming a hard-left mouthpiece? Because under new director Steve Goldstein, it has no relationship to Anne Frank or her family, lies about its origins [and] has no interest in teaching the Holocaust. Which is also why there is a universal distaste among Holocaust survivors for Goldsteins politicking on victims graves, according to Holocaust experts. Goldstein has played the members of his audience . . . for suckers, selling the Anne Frank name to advance his brand of cheap, perpetually enraged 21st-century activism. No, the Holocaust and the lessons it has to teach humanity should [not] be locked up in a museum. But leveraging it to advance your daily Twitter outrage insults the memory of its victims and cheapens your own arguments.

Angry vet: Americas Single-Payer System Is Killing Me

Dont believe those who claim a single-payer health-care system will save all of humankind from some sort of dreaded mass bodily failure, says Jonathan LaForce at The Federalist. We already have one: the Department of Veterans Affairs and its not hard to find [its] failures. We constantly see reports of vets who threw themselves out the upper windows of VA hospitals because some moronic bureaucrat decided these men were all better now and didnt need or deserve further help. Yet were supposed to just live with it. But the system is failing those who need it. And Im tired of suffering.

How woke is Anne Frank? The answer to what appears to be a silly philosophy-class inquiry can be found on the Twitter feed of the New York-based Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.Here, Executive Director Steve Goldstein brings Annes voice into the modern day, and shes very, very woke. On immigration, she supports no ban, no walls, and no raids. On the stubborn issue of North Korea, she favors the Kim regime over the Trumps. She supports transgender soldiers in the U.S. military. She has declared the 2013 Supreme Court decision striking down key portions of the Voting Rights Act one of the worst in history. She thinks the Trump administration is waging vicious wars against women, people of color, [and] LGBT people. And she has bragged about DESTROYING (her capitalization, not mine) President Trump.

And thats just in August.

Of course, Anne Frank had never heard of the Kim regime or transgender soldiers as a schoolgirl in 1940s Amsterdam. Her most precious gift to the world was a deep optimism, summed up by her most famous line: In spite of everything…people are really good at heart. So why is the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect perverting the legacy of its namesake?

As Atlantic writer Emma Green exposes in her well-orchestrated take-down of the organization, it turns out the center has no relationship to Anne Frank or her family, lies about its origins, has no interest in teaching the Holocaust, and, since turning to Goldsteins leadership last year, has morphed from an obscure organization to a far-left megaphone. Upon taking the reins of the group, Goldstein promptly shuttered its small museum and disbanded its board of advisors comprised of Holocaust experts. Then he dropped the centers emphasis on the Holocaust and went about becoming a bombastic media presence. Green notes that, The Anne Frank Center has reliably been willing to criticize the Trump administration in more aggressive and hyperbolic terms than mainstream Holocaust-remembrance groups. A news establishment eager for the most outrageous headlines has in turn lapped up Goldsteins press releases and rewarded [him] with extensive coverage. He is, after all, representing one of the most unimpeachable names in modern history.

Holocaust experts are alarmed. William Shulman, president of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, reports that there is a universal distaste among Holocaust survivors for Goldsteins politicking on victims graves. Our function is not to engage in politics, he says. Its to engage in Holocaust education, remembrance, and research. Anything that deviates from that damages our mission. Historian David Benkof writes that Goldsteins group has virtually no presence at Holocaust conferences….They are an utterly marginal organization. He accuses Goldstein of bamboozling journalists into thinking hes some kind of Holocaust expert.

In short, Goldstein has played the members of his audience from the countless news organizations that have given him a pulpit, to the hundreds of thousands who follow the Center on social-media platforms, to even the grand dame Meryl Streep, whose visage appears on the Centers website for suckers, selling the Anne Frank name to advance his brand of cheap, perpetually enraged 21st-century activism.

Politically, Goldstein and I share some views and diverge in certain ways. Some policies we agree on (I believe transgender Americans should have the right to serve openly in the military), some we do not (Im impressed by the Trump teams spearheading a recent 150 U.N. Security Council vote that increased sanctions on North Korea). The difference is that Im writing from my own perspective: Jewish, gay, Philadelphian, the child of public servants, the grandchild of three Auschwitz survivors. I dont claim to be from the Anne Frank Center or to speak for Holocaust victims, nor do I claim to be a representative of Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr., even if such claims would strengthen my arguments. I wouldnt presume to weaponize the memory of 6 million dead Jews in order to advance my personal agenda, increase my odds of being quoted in the press, or bludgeon my political opponents. Yet that has been the sole mission of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect under Goldstein.

Im not saying that the Holocaust and the lessons it has to teach humanity should be locked up in a museum. Anne Franks voice must first and foremost echo to us as a call to radical empathy issued in the most trying, politically caustic circumstances imaginable. Her passionate, unceasing optimism offers lessons for today. Her name should bring to mind the memories of the millions of Jews, Roma, gays and lesbians, mentally disabled people, and political dissidents who were exterminated by Hitlers evil regime, under the noses of many who found it too inconvenient to speak up or help. Her memory should be used to defend Jewish children all over the world at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise at both extremes of the political spectrum.

Still, the Holocaust is and only will ever be The Holocaust: the greatest stain on human history, the most evil systematic act ever perpetrated on this earth. Leveraging it to advance your daily Twitter outrage insults the memory of its victims and cheapens your own arguments. It is not a commodity to be traded or a barb to launch at your adversaries. As the pace of our politics becomes more and more frenetic, and as increasingly galvanized political groups attempt to deal body blows to their opposition, we must establish what portions of our cultural history are off limits. When 2017, Twitter, and outrage politics are all a distant memory, what will we have preserved of Anne Franks legacy, and the legacy of all Holocaust victims?

Now is the time for reputable Jewish and Holocaust organizations and reputable people everywhere to tell Goldstein that he must stop speaking in the name of Anne Frank. He is a charlatan, and he should be disavowed and stripped of his soapbox.

Albert Eisenberg is a Republican-leaning communications consultant based in Philadelphia.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect has asked Twitter to suspend President Trump’s Twitter accounts, accusing him of being “an accomplice to domestic terrorism.”

“Dear @Twitter corporate: He is an accomplice to domestic terrorism. If you can’t end @POTUS account, at least end @realDonaldTrump account,” the organization wrote Tuesday, referring to the president’s official and personal Twitter accounts.

Trump denounced specific white nationalist groups in a televised statement on Monday, two days after a car plowed through a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va., killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

“Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its names are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” the president said.

Trump faced pressure from Republicans and Democrats for not specifically condemning the groups earlier. Several lawmakers referred to the car attack as “domestic terrorism.”

Trump again caused controversy Tuesday when he retweeted an image of a train hitting a CNN reporter.

“This is the violent image of the murder of a @CNN reporter @POTUS tweeted today, one day after his #FakeCondemnation of White Supremacy,” the Anne Frank Center tweeted before asking Twitter to suspend Trump’s accounts.

Trump has since deleted the retweet.

The organization has been a frequent critic of Trump and his policies throughout Trump’s short tenure as president.

Its connections to Anne Frank’s family were disputed in an April report.

A civil rights group has accused President Donald Trump ofcreating an incubator of hate after a Holocaust memorial in Boston was vandalized for the second time in two months on Monday.

Police in Boston arrested a 17-year-old male suspect on Monday evening after being told by witnesses that he had thrown a rock and smashed part of a glass panel at the New England Holocaust Memorial.

The suspects name has not been released, as he is a juvenile, but police said he would be charged with wilful and malicious destruction of property. The Boston Police Departments civil rights unit is also looking into the incident.

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Workers clean up broken glass after the Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., on August 14. Brian Snyder/Reuters

The New England Holocaust Memorial consists of six luminous glass towers that are each 54 feet high. The panels are etched with millions of numbers that reflect the numbers tattooed onto victims by Nazi guards at concentration camps.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a Jewish nonprofit that promotes civil and human rights, tweeted that it held President Trump responsible for creating the climate in which such an act could take place.

The incident came after demonstrations by white supremacists groups, including neo-Nazis, in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. Some of the individuals who participated in the demonstrations wore Nazi insignias and made Nazi salutes. One woman was killed after a car was driven into a crowd of counter-protesters.

President Trump has come underheavy criticism for failing to speak out againstthe groups involved in the clashes. While he condemned the violence on Saturday, Trump ascribed it to many sides and was widely condemned for not calling out white supremacist groups, some of which positioned themselves as Trump supporters.

A man makes a slashing motion across his throat toward counter-protesters as he marches with other white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Trump gave a press conference at the White House on Monday in which he called out the criminals and thugs behind the violence in Charlottesville, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

But despite the conciliatory tone, Trump later attacked the media for its coverage of the Charlottesville protests.

The New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in June, when 21-year-old James Isaac, who has a history of mental illness, was charged with destroying one of the 132 panels, the Boston Herald reported.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said on Monday that the vandalism will not be tolerated in our city and linked the incident to the weekend protests. In light of the recent events and unrest in Charlottesville, its sad to see a young person choose to engage in such senseless and shameful behavior, said Evans.

Good riddance! Thats what the Anne Frank Center had to say about CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord being fired Thursday after he tweeted, Sieg Heil, a victory salute that used to be said at political rallies. GOOD RIDDANCE, JEFFREY LORD. We commend @CNN for firing @POTUS defender Lord for using Nazi salute on Twitter, the organization wrote.

President Donald Trump continues to face outrage over his response to last weekend’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where racism and anti-Semitism were on clear display. We speak with Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, which is calling on Twitter to suspend Trump’s personal account, after branding him an accomplice to domestic terrorism. TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: President Trump continues to face outrage over his response to last weekend’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where racism and anti-Semitism were on clear display in scenes like this one, when torch-bearing protesters marched on the University of Virginia campus Friday night chanting “Blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology. WHITE SUPREMACISTS: Blood and soil! Blood and soil! Blood and soil! Blood and soil! AMY GOODMAN: At Saturday’s Unite the Right rally, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members also displayed swastikas on flags and banners as they protested the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Members of the local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, said that ahead of the protest, while they were praying, men dressed in fatigues and carrying semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the synagogue, prompting people to leave the service from the back of the building in groups as a safety precaution. Later in the afternoon, Heather Heyer was killed, on Saturday, when a 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer named James Alex Fields plowed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators. In another incident, white supremacists beat 20-year-old African-American protester De’Andre Harris. Following the protests, Monday, the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in Boston, Massachusetts, by a teenager who threw a rock through a glass panel etched with numbers symbolizing the numbers tattooed on the arms of Jews and others imprisoned in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. The attack marked the second time this summer that Boston’s Holocaust Memorial has been vandalized. It took until Tuesday for President Trump to place blame on white supremacists for the deadly violence in Charlottesville. During a news conference at Trump Tower, he attacked the counterprotesters, repeating his earlier claim that both sides were to blame for the violence. He also seemed to ridicule the national movement to remove Confederate monuments, saying the protesters would next want to tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Trump also defended some of the white nationalist protesters who descended on Charlottesville. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.” AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, President Trump took to Twitter to further complain that it’s, quote, “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. … [T]he beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” he tweeted. Leaders of four congressional caucuses are now demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, quote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on US policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.” Now the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is calling on Twitter to suspend President Trump’s personal account, after branding him an “accomplice to domestic terrorism.” For more, we’re joined by the group’s executive director, Steve Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. Welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what you’re calling for. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Amy, Twitter has a choice here: It can stand with the love that Heather Heyer’s life stood for, or it can stand for the hatred that Donald Trump stands for. There are no two sides. Where is Twitter going to stand? Twitter is under no obligation, as a private company, to carry Donald Trump’s hatred. So, President Trump has two accounts. He has his POTUS account, and for the sake of free speech and getting his hate on record for future generations to look at it and to say “Never again,” listen, for those reasons, keep his presidential account. But he has a personal account, @realDonaldTrump, that amplifies his hate. Twitter doesn’t have to double down on hate. Twitter has a choice. Get rid of the @realDonaldTrump hatred account, not but better than the POTUS account. At least get rid of one. AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about issues of free speech here? STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, again, he has his POTUS account. Free speech doesn’t mean that you have to give hate twice the megaphone, when he already has one megaphone. That seems, to us, a Solomonic solution. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about his response. On Monday, a teleprompter news — he makes a teleprompter statement — some called it a hostage video — where he condemned and named the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis, this directly contradicting what he had said two days before, when he said that all sides were responsible for the violence, and then, the next day, on Tuesday, reverting back to what he said on Saturday and particularly focusing on the fact that the white supremacists were — had a permit for their protest, unlike the counterprotesters. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Amy, I was horrified on Monday by the coverage of the mainstream media that applauded the president for his hostage news conference in which he read a teleprompter with all the energy of a power outage in New York City. He didn’t look like he meant every word — any word. He looked like there was a figurative gun to his head. He didn’t want to be there. And when I read the media reports, they said, “Aha, the president finally came out!” You’ve got to be kidding. The president said nothing after Charlottesville. Finally, he was forced to. Have we so normalized hate that that Monday press conference, that was scripted, should get applause? AMY GOODMAN: Not even a press conference, a statement. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And not even a press conference. But what kind of world has America landed in? Where is our morality, that we are settling for the crumbs of a fake condemnation? Now, we — AMY GOODMAN: Well, we learned it was fake on Tuesday. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And we learned it was fake on Tuesday. Here’s the thing. It’s time not to limit ourselves to saying that President Trump commits acts of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBT. The president is racist, the president is Islamophobic, and the president is anti-Semitic. Call it out for what it is, because if you don’t, you’re normalizing the underlying conditions. Now, why would I say that? We’ve seen again and again a pattern. How many times do we have to see that if a president quacks like a racist duck, walks like a racist dock and does everything in his power to be a racist duck, he is a racist duck? AMY GOODMAN: What does this have to do with Anne Frank? You’re executive director of the Anne Frank Center. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: So, let me say this. There are those — not in your audience — who would say, “Uh, Steven, aren’t you coming on a little too strong for the Anne Frank Center?” No. Anne Frank did not just write her diary as her own personal experience, which she included. She also wrote it as one of social justice’s greatest exhortations. She wrote that we have to act to prevent “never again.” So, Amy, “never again” is supposed to be an early warning system. If we don’t shout this danger from the rooftops, when will we? When history has taken its worst stages of progression? That’s when we’re going to shout it from the rooftops? Please. AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, leaders — let me turn to leaders of four congressional caucuses demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on US policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.” Talk about who Sebastian Gorka is today and also the calls, the expos by the Jewish Forward about his ties to far-right Nazi groups in Hungary. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Sebastian Gorka has links to a Hungarian neo-Nazi organization called the Vitzi Rend. His father was a member, so the daily Forward reported. And Sebastian Gorka actually wears his father’s neo-Nazi-sympathetic Vitzi Rend medal. Sebastian Gorka has worn it on many occasions, and there are photos. Sebastian Gorka says wearing this neo-Nazi medal is merely a tribute to his late father. I’m sorry, didn’t dad have a favorite tie? Really? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly wear my father’s neo-Nazi medals. AMY GOODMAN: And Steve Bannon? STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: OK, Steve Bannon is beneath contempt. Here’s the politics we have in the White House. President Trump is clearly afraid to fire Steve Bannon, because President Trump probably wonders what hell Steve Bannon will cause out there. Steve Bannon is destroying the country. He’s got to go. AMY GOODMAN: Let me play what President Trump had to say about him, insisting that Steve Bannon is not a racist. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I like Mr. Bannon. He’s a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that. And I like him. He’s a good man. He is not a racist. I can tell you that. He’s a good person. He actually gets a very unfair press in that regard. But we’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon. But he’s a good person. And I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly. AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump, talking about Steve Bannon. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Donald Trump really is the expert on seeing whether somebody is racist? Give me a break. Come on. But, you know, I’m intrigued by that clip. We had Heather Heyer die on Saturday, and President Trump is talking about his alleged victory for president. How narcissistic can you get? What President Trump should have done in Trump Tower is be a leader, commune with our grief. And, Amy, this isn’t — this isn’t partisan, because we had — every president of the last few generations knew how to commune with grief. Not this president. AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer spoke with Israeli media and compared his views to those held by Zionists. This is Spencer speaking to Channel 2 News Israel. RICHARD SPENCER: As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identity, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites. I mean, you could — you could say that I am a white Zionist, in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland that’s for us and ourselves, just like you want a secure homeland in Israel. AMY GOODMAN: That is white supremacist Richard Spencer. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, I’m a proud Jew. I’m a proud supporter of Israel. I’m a proud supporter of a two-state solution for Israel living side by side with an independent Palestinian state together in love and cooperation. That is repulsive. Wherever you stand on the Middle East — I don’t care if you’re left, right or center — what we just heard is repulsive. And President Trump is bad for the Israelis. He’s bad for the Palestinians. Talk about an opportunity to unify us. That was exploitation. I want to throw up. AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with David Duke speaking in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. The KKK leader said white nationalists are going to, quote, “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump’s presidency.” DAVID DUKE: This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back. And that’s what we’ve got to do. AMY GOODMAN: Well, during the presidential campaign last year, then-candidate Donald Trump came under fire for inciting his supporters to violence. Here’s one example. DONALD TRUMP: If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise. AMY GOODMAN: So that was President Trump then. And, of course, we see what he’s saying today. Final comments, Richard [sic] Goldstein of the Anne Frank Center? STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Steven Goldstein, but I have a brother Richard. AMY GOODMAN: Steven Goldstein. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: I don’t mind. But listen, how is Melania’s cyberbullying campaign going? We see in that clip that there is almost no space — in fact, none — between Donald Trump’s rhetoric and David Duke’s rhetoric. We have a rhetorical convergence between the hate speech of the president of the United States and, as we saw in that clip, David Duke. That’s what America has become. And we can all weep. AMY GOODMAN: Steven Goldstein, we’ll leave it there, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. When we come back, Part 2 of our conversation with a former white supremacist as well as a nephew of a white supremacist who marched this weekend in Charlottesville. Stay with us.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: President Trump continues to face outrage over his response to last weekends deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where racism and anti-Semitism were on clear display in scenes like this one, when torch-bearing protesters marched on the University of Virginia campus Friday night chanting “Blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology. WHITE SUPREMACISTS: Blood and soil! Blood and soil! Blood and soil! Blood and soil! AMY GOODMAN: At Saturdays Unite the Right rally, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members also displayed swastikas on flags and banners as they protested the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Members of the local synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, said that ahead of the protest, while they were praying, men dressed in fatigues and carrying semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the synagogue, prompting people to leave the service from the back of the building in groups as a safety precaution. Later in the afternoon, Heather Heyer was killed, on Saturday, when a 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer named James Alex Fields plowed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators. In another incident, white supremacists beat 20-year-old African-American protester DeAndre Harris. Following the protests, [Tuesday], the New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in Boston, Massachusetts, by a teenager who threw a rock through a glass panel etched with numbers symbolizing the numbers tattooed on the arms of Jews and others imprisoned in Nazi Germanys concentration camps. The attack marked the second time this summer that Bostons Holocaust Memorial has been vandalized. It took until Tuesday for President Trump to place blame on white supremacists for the deadly violence in Charlottesville. During a news conference at Trump Tower, he attacked the counterprotesters, repeating his earlier claim that both sides were to blame for the violence. He also seemed to ridicule the national movement to remove Confederate monuments, saying the protesters would next want to tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Trump also defended some of the white nationalist protesters who descended on Charlottesville. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Ive condemned neo-Nazis. Ive condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.” AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, President Trump took to Twitter to further complain that its, quote, “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. … [T]he beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” he tweeted. Leaders of four congressional caucuses are now demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, quote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on U.S. policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.” Now the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is calling on Twitter to suspend President Trumps personal account, after branding him an “accomplice to domestic terrorism.” For more, were joined by the groups executive director, Steve Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. Welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what youre calling for. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Amy, Twitter has a choice here: It can stand with the love that Heather Heyers life stood for, or it can stand for the hatred that Donald Trump stands for. There are no two sides. Where is Twitter going to stand? Twitter is under no obligation, as a private company, to carry Donald Trumps hatred. So, President Trump has two accounts. He has his POTUS account, and for the sake of free speech and getting his hate on record for future generations to look at it and to say “Never again,” listen, for those reasons, keep his presidential account. But he has a personal account, @realDonaldTrump, that amplifies his hate. Twitter doesnt have to double down on hate. Twitter has a choice. Get rid of the @realDonaldTrump hatred account, not but better than the POTUS account. At least get rid of one. AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about issues of free speech here? STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, again, he has his POTUS account. Free speech doesnt mean that you have to give hate twice the megaphone, when he already has one megaphone. That seems, to us, a Solomonic solution. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about his response. On Monday, a teleprompter newshe makes a teleprompter statementsome called it a hostage videowhere he condemned and named the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis, this directly contradicting what he had said two days before, when he said that all sides were responsible for the violence, and then, the next day, on Tuesday, reverting back to what he said on Saturday and particularly focusing on the fact that the white supremacists werehad a permit for their protest, unlike the counterprotesters. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Amy, I was horrified on Monday by the coverage of the mainstream media that applauded the president for his hostage news conference in which he read a teleprompter with all the energy of a power outage in New York City. He didnt look like he meant every wordany word. He looked like there was a figurative gun to his head. He didnt want to be there. And when I read the media reports, they said, “Aha, the president finally came out!” Youve got to be kidding. The president said nothing after Charlottesville. Finally, he was forced to. Have we so normalized hate that that Monday press conference, that was scripted, should get applause? AMY GOODMAN: Not even a press conference, a statement. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And not even a press conference. But what kind of world has America landed in? Where is our morality, that we are settling for the crumbs of a fake condemnation? Now, we AMY GOODMAN: Well, we learned it was fake on Tuesday. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: And we learned it was fake on Tuesday. Heres the thing. Its time not to limit ourselves to saying that President Trump commits acts of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBT. The president is racist, the president is Islamophobic, and the president is anti-Semitic. Call it out for what it is, because if you dont, youre normalizing the underlying conditions. Now, why would I say that? Weve seen again and again a pattern. How many times do we have to see that if a president quacks like a racist duck, walks like a racist dock and does everything in his power to be a racist duck, he is a racist duck? AMY GOODMAN: What does this have to do with Anne Frank? Youre executive director of the Anne Frank Center. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: So, let me say this. There are thosenot in your audiencewho would say, “Uh, Steven, arent you coming on a little too strong for the Anne Frank Center?” No. Anne Frank did not just write her diary as her own personal experience, which she included. She also wrote it as one of social justices greatest exhortations. She wrote that we have to act to prevent “never again.” So, Amy, “never again” is supposed to be an early warning system. If we dont shout this danger from the rooftops, when will we? When history has taken its worst stages of progression? Thats when were going to shout it from the rooftops? Please. AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, leaderslet me turn to leaders of four congressional caucuses demanding the White House fire senior aides Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller over their white supremacist views. In a letter to President Trump, the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, Progressive and Black Caucuses wrote, “We are deeply concerned that their continued influence on U.S. policy emboldens and tacitly approves the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred.” Talk about who Sebastian Gorka is today and also the calls, the expos by the Jewish Forward about his ties to far-right Nazi groups in Hungary. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Sebastian Gorka has links to a Hungarian neo-Nazi organization called the Vitzi Rend. His father was a member, so the daily Forward reported. And Sebastian Gorka actually wears his fathers neo-Nazi-sympathetic Vitzi Rend medal. Sebastian Gorka has worn it on many occasions, and there are photos. Sebastian Gorka says wearing this neo-Nazi medal is merely a tribute to his late father. Im sorry, didnt dad have a favorite tie? Really? I mean, I dont know about you, but I dont particularly wear my fathers neo-Nazi medals. AMY GOODMAN: And Steve Bannon? STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: OK, Steve Bannon is beneath contempt. Heres the politics we have in the White House. President Trump is clearly afraid to fire Steve Bannon, because President Trump probably wonders what hell Steve Bannon will cause out there. Steve Bannon is destroying the country. Hes got to go. AMY GOODMAN: Let me play what President Trump had to say about him, insisting that Steve Bannon is not a racist. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I like Mr. Bannon. Hes a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that. And I like him. Hes a good man. He is not a racist. I can tell you that. Hes a good person. He actually gets a very unfair press in that regard. But well see what happens with Mr. Bannon. But hes a good person. And I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly. AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump, talking about Steve Bannon. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Donald Trump really is the expert on seeing whether somebody is racist? Give me a break. Come on. But, you know, Im intrigued by that clip. We had Heather Heyer die on Saturday, and President Trump is talking about his alleged victory for president. How narcissistic can you get? What President Trump should have done in Trump Tower is be a leader, commune with our grief. And, Amy, this isntthis isnt partisan, because we hadevery president of the last few generations knew how to commune with grief. Not this president. AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer spoke with Israeli media and compared his views to those held by Zionists. This is Spencer speaking to Channel 2 News Israel. RICHARD SPENCER: As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identity, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites. I mean, you couldyou could say that I am a white Zionist, in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland thats for us and ourselves, just like you want a secure homeland in Israel. AMY GOODMAN: That is white supremacist Richard Spencer. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Well, Im a proud Jew. Im a proud supporter of Israel. Im a proud supporter of a two-state solution for Israel living side by side with an independent Palestinian state together in love and cooperation. That is repulsive. Wherever you stand on the Middle EastI dont care if youre left, right or centerwhat we just heard is repulsive. And President Trump is bad for the Israelis. Hes bad for the Palestinians. Talk about an opportunity to unify us. That was exploitation. I want to throw up. AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with David Duke speaking in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. The KKK leader said white nationalists are going to, quote, “fulfill the promises of Donald Trumps presidency.” DAVID DUKE: This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. Were going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. Thats what we believed in. Thats why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said hes going to take our country back. And thats what weve got to do. AMY GOODMAN: Well, during the presidential campaign last year, then-candidate Donald Trump came under fire for inciting his supporters to violence. Heres one example. DONALD TRUMP: If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hellI promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise. AMY GOODMAN: So that was President Trump then. And, of course, we see what hes saying today. Final comments, Richard [sic] Goldstein of the Anne Frank Center? STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: Steven Goldstein, but I have a brother Richard. AMY GOODMAN: Steven Goldstein. STEVEN GOLDSTEIN: I dont mind. But listen, how is Melanias cyberbullying campaign going? We see in that clip that there is almost no spacein fact, nonebetween Donald Trumps rhetoric and David Dukes rhetoric. We have a rhetorical convergence between the hate speech of the president of the United States and, as we saw in that clip, David Duke. Thats what America has become. And we can all weep. AMY GOODMAN: Steven Goldstein, well leave it there, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. When we come back, Part 2 of our conversation with a former white supremacist as well as a nephew of a white supremacist who marched this weekend in Charlottesville. Stay with us.

After the endless barrage of exchanges of the past weeks, some appallingly hate-filled, some grossly apologetic and some shamefully inept, let me say one last thing: The man in the Oval Office is a RACIST. The man is also a narcissist and therefore, cannot think beyond himself or see past today but unfortunately, he along with his presidency are well on their way to becoming a disgraceful chapter in the saga of the world just as the vile words and abhorrent actions of Hitler will forever be etched in the annals of history. So here is my modest reminder to our elected officials, particularly those who are part of Trumps world: 1. Those who preach hate against those who are different are WRONG. 2. Those who oppose those who preach hate against those who are different are RIGHT. The only logical conclusion therefore is that TRUMP IS WRONG. It is now time to lose sight of party affiliations, set aside partisan politics, shed the need to win arguments and/or point fingers because there is one and only one morality. So put away your ego, stop this egotistical man and stamp out the Nazis he is protecting. It really isnt that hard to stand up against hate. Remember the little girl who had the gumption to denounce hatred and uphold love even when pitilessly hunted down simply because of the faith she was born into? The world was a bit late in stopping the madness then. We paid dearly by losing millions of precious lives and generating countless lifeless hearts that continue to grieve to this day. Lets not let history repeat itself. We know better now. Upstanding citizens of the world and sentinels of this great democracy know that you have been given a second chance and endowed with the power to change the course of history which keeps writing itself unforgivingly. Do what is RIGHT for the sake of history. Stop him and stop the hate. Rumni Saha The Morning Email Wake up to the day’s most important news.

From the right: Is Trump Destroying Conservatism? Never-Trumpers may have been right when they warned that he would destroy the conservative movement by becoming the face of it, says Jamie Weinstein at the Washington Examiner. Because the president is not now, nor has he ever been, a conservative. Indeed, its unlikely he has an adult understanding of what conservatism actually is. But he pretended to be one to win conservative votes. Yet after the events of the last week, too many people will now, unfortunately, begin to associate white nationalism with conservatism. And that undermines conservative arguments in legitimate debates, turning them toxic. President Trump is destroying the conservative movement and, frankly, many conservatives are complicit for giving him the opportunity to do so. Security writer: The Gasps of Weak Fascism Its important to understand what the terror in Charlottesville means, but also what it does not mean, contends Eli Lake at Bloomberg: It is not a return of Jim Crow. Nor is it the face of the new right, despite the bigots call for unity. It is not the dawn of American fascism, either. Rather it is the growl and gasp of a hateful and hopeless fringe. Terrorism and street fights, after all, are the recourse of the weak radical movements that cannot advance their agenda through the ballot will choose bloodshed. But American history teaches that violent radical movements have failed in this country. Indeed, the norms that Trump tried to destroy as a candidate are not as fragile as the bigots would like to think. For while the swastika-bearing marchers are indeed fascists, they are weak fascists. Tennis fan: Let Maria Sharapova Play Tom Perrotta at The Weekly Standard applauds the wild-card invitation thats just been extended by the US Open to Maria Sharapova for next months tournament: Its unfair when an athlete pays the full price for a mistake she made because she wasnt paying attention, rather than trying to break the rules. Sharapova has been serving a 15-month suspension involving meldonium, a cardiac supplement she had been taking for years. But the US Tennis Association banned it at the start of the 2016 season and Sharapova, somehow, missed the news. Thats inexcusable but theres no reason to look at this as a crime. Its unclear from testing how much this drug does its not a steroid or a boost of red blood cells. As a past Open champion, its perfectly reasonable for the USTA to want to include Sharapova at the expense of another long-shot. Conservative take: A Disgrace to Anne Franks Memory Why, asks Albert Eisenberg at National Review, is the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect perverting the legacy of its namesake by becoming a hard-left mouthpiece? Because under new director Steve Goldstein, it has no relationship to Anne Frank or her family, lies about its origins [and] has no interest in teaching the Holocaust. Which is also why there is a universal distaste among Holocaust survivors for Goldsteins politicking on victims graves, according to Holocaust experts. Goldstein has played the members of his audience . . . for suckers, selling the Anne Frank name to advance his brand of cheap, perpetually enraged 21st-century activism. No, the Holocaust and the lessons it has to teach humanity should [not] be locked up in a museum. But leveraging it to advance your daily Twitter outrage insults the memory of its victims and cheapens your own arguments. Angry vet: Americas Single-Payer System Is Killing Me Dont believe those who claim a single-payer health-care system will save all of humankind from some sort of dreaded mass bodily failure, says Jonathan LaForce at The Federalist. We already have one: the Department of Veterans Affairs and its not hard to find [its] failures. We constantly see reports of vets who threw themselves out the upper windows of VA hospitals because some moronic bureaucrat decided these men were all better now and didnt need or deserve further help. Yet were supposed to just live with it. But the system is failing those who need it. And Im tired of suffering. Compiled by Eric Fettmann

How woke is Anne Frank? The answer to what appears to be a silly philosophy-class inquiry can be found on the Twitter feed of the New York-based Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.Here, Executive Director Steve Goldstein brings Annes voice into the modern day, and shes very, very woke. On immigration, she supports no ban, no walls, and no raids. On the stubborn issue of North Korea, she favors the Kim regime over the Trumps. She supports transgender soldiers in the U.S. military. She has declared the 2013 Supreme Court decision striking down key portions of the Voting Rights Act one of the worst in history. She thinks the Trump administration is waging vicious wars against women, people of color, [and] LGBT people. And she has bragged about DESTROYING (her capitalization, not mine) President Trump. And thats just in August. Of course, Anne Frank had never heard of the Kim regime or transgender soldiers as a schoolgirl in 1940s Amsterdam. Her most precious gift to the world was a deep optimism, summed up by her most famous line: In spite of everything…people are really good at heart. So why is the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect perverting the legacy of its namesake? As Atlantic writer Emma Green exposes in her well-orchestrated take-down of the organization, it turns out the center has no relationship to Anne Frank or her family, lies about its origins, has no interest in teaching the Holocaust, and, since turning to Goldsteins leadership last year, has morphed from an obscure organization to a far-left megaphone. Upon taking the reins of the group, Goldstein promptly shuttered its small museum and disbanded its board of advisors comprised of Holocaust experts. Then he dropped the centers emphasis on the Holocaust and went about becoming a bombastic media presence. Green notes that, The Anne Frank Center has reliably been willing to criticize the Trump administration in more aggressive and hyperbolic terms than mainstream Holocaust-remembrance groups. A news establishment eager for the most outrageous headlines has in turn lapped up Goldsteins press releases and rewarded [him] with extensive coverage. He is, after all, representing one of the most unimpeachable names in modern history. Holocaust experts are alarmed. William Shulman, president of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, reports that there is a universal distaste among Holocaust survivors for Goldsteins politicking on victims graves. Our function is not to engage in politics, he says. Its to engage in Holocaust education, remembrance, and research. Anything that deviates from that damages our mission. Historian David Benkof writes that Goldsteins group has virtually no presence at Holocaust conferences….They are an utterly marginal organization. He accuses Goldstein of bamboozling journalists into thinking hes some kind of Holocaust expert. In short, Goldstein has played the members of his audience from the countless news organizations that have given him a pulpit, to the hundreds of thousands who follow the Center on social-media platforms, to even the grand dame Meryl Streep, whose visage appears on the Centers website for suckers, selling the Anne Frank name to advance his brand of cheap, perpetually enraged 21st-century activism. Politically, Goldstein and I share some views and diverge in certain ways. Some policies we agree on (I believe transgender Americans should have the right to serve openly in the military), some we do not (Im impressed by the Trump teams spearheading a recent 150 U.N. Security Council vote that increased sanctions on North Korea). The difference is that Im writing from my own perspective: Jewish, gay, Philadelphian, the child of public servants, the grandchild of three Auschwitz survivors. I dont claim to be from the Anne Frank Center or to speak for Holocaust victims, nor do I claim to be a representative of Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr., even if such claims would strengthen my arguments. I wouldnt presume to weaponize the memory of 6 million dead Jews in order to advance my personal agenda, increase my odds of being quoted in the press, or bludgeon my political opponents. Yet that has been the sole mission of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect under Goldstein. Im not saying that the Holocaust and the lessons it has to teach humanity should be locked up in a museum. Anne Franks voice must first and foremost echo to us as a call to radical empathy issued in the most trying, politically caustic circumstances imaginable. Her passionate, unceasing optimism offers lessons for today. Her name should bring to mind the memories of the millions of Jews, Roma, gays and lesbians, mentally disabled people, and political dissidents who were exterminated by Hitlers evil regime, under the noses of many who found it too inconvenient to speak up or help. Her memory should be used to defend Jewish children all over the world at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise at both extremes of the political spectrum. Still, the Holocaust is and only will ever be The Holocaust: the greatest stain on human history, the most evil systematic act ever perpetrated on this earth. Leveraging it to advance your daily Twitter outrage insults the memory of its victims and cheapens your own arguments. It is not a commodity to be traded or a barb to launch at your adversaries. As the pace of our politics becomes more and more frenetic, and as increasingly galvanized political groups attempt to deal body blows to their opposition, we must establish what portions of our cultural history are off limits. When 2017, Twitter, and outrage politics are all a distant memory, what will we have preserved of Anne Franks legacy, and the legacy of all Holocaust victims? Now is the time for reputable Jewish and Holocaust organizations and reputable people everywhere to tell Goldstein that he must stop speaking in the name of Anne Frank. He is a charlatan, and he should be disavowed and stripped of his soapbox. Albert Eisenberg is a Republican-leaning communications consultant based in Philadelphia.

Dear @Twitter corporate: He is an accomplice to domestic terrorism. If you can’t end @POTUS account, at least end @realDonaldTrump account, they tweeted. In a strongly worded statement, the centres executive director Steven Goldstein called the president delusional. Though the president finally mentioned, after long, painful three days, the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, again he insisted on saying others, Mr Goldstein said. And the president made it worse. He said we should all be united, but theres no way on Gods earth will we ever unite with Nazis. That is not what the Greatest Generation fought and died for. Finally, what planet has the president been living on when he just said we all salute the same flag? We dont salute the Nazi flag as the White Supremacists in Charlottesville do. He is delusional.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect has asked Twitter to suspend President Trump’s Twitter accounts, accusing him of being “an accomplice to domestic terrorism.” “Dear @Twitter corporate: He is an accomplice to domestic terrorism. If you can’t end @POTUS account, at least end @realDonaldTrump account,” the organization wrote Tuesday, referring to the president’s official and personal Twitter accounts. Trump denounced specific white nationalist groups in a televised statement on Monday, two days after a car plowed through a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va., killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its names are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” the president said. Trump faced pressure from Republicans and Democrats for not specifically condemning the groups earlier. Several lawmakers referred to the car attack as “domestic terrorism.” Trump again caused controversy Tuesday when he retweeted an image of a train hitting a CNN reporter. “This is the violent image of the murder of a @CNN reporter @POTUS tweeted today, one day after his #FakeCondemnation of White Supremacy,” the Anne Frank Center tweeted before asking Twitter to suspend Trump’s accounts. Trump has since deleted the retweet. The organization has been a frequent critic of Trump and his policies throughout Trump’s short tenure as president. Its connections to Anne Frank’s family were disputed in an April report.

A civil rights group has accused President Donald Trump ofcreating an incubator of hate after a Holocaust memorial in Boston was vandalized for the second time in two months on Monday. Police in Boston arrested a 17-year-old male suspect on Monday evening after being told by witnesses that he had thrown a rock and smashed part of a glass panel at the New England Holocaust Memorial. The suspects name has not been released, as he is a juvenile, but police said he would be charged with wilful and malicious destruction of property. The Boston Police Departments civil rights unit is also looking into the incident. Daily Emails and Alerts – Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inbox Workers clean up broken glass after the Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., on August 14. Brian Snyder/Reuters The New England Holocaust Memorial consists of six luminous glass towers that are each 54 feet high. The panels are etched with millions of numbers that reflect the numbers tattooed onto victims by Nazi guards at concentration camps. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a Jewish nonprofit that promotes civil and human rights, tweeted that it held President Trump responsible for creating the climate in which such an act could take place. The incident came after demonstrations by white supremacists groups, including neo-Nazis, in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. Some of the individuals who participated in the demonstrations wore Nazi insignias and made Nazi salutes. One woman was killed after a car was driven into a crowd of counter-protesters. President Trump has come underheavy criticism for failing to speak out againstthe groups involved in the clashes. While he condemned the violence on Saturday, Trump ascribed it to many sides and was widely condemned for not calling out white supremacist groups, some of which positioned themselves as Trump supporters. A man makes a slashing motion across his throat toward counter-protesters as he marches with other white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Trump gave a press conference at the White House on Monday in which he called out the criminals and thugs behind the violence in Charlottesville, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. But despite the conciliatory tone, Trump later attacked the media for its coverage of the Charlottesville protests. The New England Holocaust Memorial was vandalized in June, when 21-year-old James Isaac, who has a history of mental illness, was charged with destroying one of the 132 panels, the Boston Herald reported. Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said on Monday that the vandalism will not be tolerated in our city and linked the incident to the weekend protests. In light of the recent events and unrest in Charlottesville, its sad to see a young person choose to engage in such senseless and shameful behavior, said Evans.

Good riddance! Thats what the Anne Frank Center had to say about CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord being fired Thursday after he tweeted, Sieg Heil, a victory salute that used to be said at political rallies. GOOD RIDDANCE, JEFFREY LORD. We commend @CNN for firing @POTUS defender Lord for using Nazi salute on Twitter, the organization wrote.

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